Visualising the uncertainty in data

‘Statistics is a game where you figure out these uncertainties and make estimated judgements based on your calculations. But standard errors, confidence intervals, and likelihoods often lose their visual space in data graphics, which leads to judgements based on simplified summaries expressed as means, medians, or extremes.

That’s no good. You miss out on the interesting stuff. The important stuff. So here are some visualization options for the uncertainties in your data, each with its pros, cons, and examples’.

The Data Journalism Awards 2019 competition is organised by the Global Editors Network, supported by the Google News Initiative, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Microsoft, and Chartbeat. Today, it’s the biggest international competition recognising outstanding work in the field of data journalism worldwide.